


Fashion

by agnesgrey



Category: Jessica Jones (TV), The Defenders (Marvel TV)
Genre: Alternate Canon, Avengers: Endgame (Movie), Character Death, Costumes, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Friendship, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Halloween, Hope in the Dark, Post-snap
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-31
Updated: 2019-10-31
Packaged: 2020-12-30 19:42:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,476
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21145460
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/agnesgrey/pseuds/agnesgrey
Summary: Days were weeks and then were months and the scary thing is, Jessica can see how the days will become years: this is just the way they live now. The way theywilllive. And that's if they're lucky, and work hard, and almost everyone's on their best goddamned behavior, forever. There's no Superman charging out of the phone booth on his way to save them all, no Vulcans making first contact (because of course Danny Rand, after being raised in Kathmandu, took about five minutes here to turn into a fuckingTrekkie), and no light at the end of the tunnel, unless someone brought a blowtorch. A flamethrower. Maybe at least some matches.





	Fashion

**Author's Note:**

  * For [alchemise](https://archiveofourown.org/users/alchemise/gifts).

> Other content notes: Mentions of 9/11, and detailed descriptions of the Snap and its aftereffects.
> 
>   
Written for the prompt: 
> 
> _Thanos' Snap! I will never get tired of stories about how it affected NYC and the Defenders. Kill anyone you like! Go as dark as you want! Or go for something more hopeful, maybe the survivors come together with everyone else in Endgame to help save the world._
> 
> There's a little bit mixed in about the Defenders and costumes, just for fun. I really hope you like it, alchemise!

Jessica wasn't in the city for 9/11, but the Snap is still freaking out the people who were. She remembers the Battle of New York, but more from the outside: she wasn't anywhere near Midtown, and she only saw the flying centipede nightmare monsters on TV. She did help out some volunteering with cleanup afterwards, like everybody did, but she couldn't let people know how strong she really was, so she couldn't really help out at all. New Yorkers love bitching about whether Queens rates over Brooklyn, but when something happens to the city, it's like everyone is A _New Yorker._ It would break her heart if it wasn't so fucking corny. No better place to live, Trish would always say; maybe so, and maybe there was no worse place to die, if your own sister turned into ash in front of you, if you couldn't grip her hand and keep her from blowing away right before your eyes, if her ashes mixed and blended with the ashes of all the other people and the ashes from the burning buildings and exploding cars and crashing planes, so there was nothing left of them to scatter, but everyone who died was scattered everywhere. Cleaning up after the Battle wasn't like that at all. It was finite, a project: one big area, one city, one fight. This was everywhere. Everyone. There had been a war they were never invited to, and they'd all lost. So now she has to show up and _do her part,_ because so many other people who would, without being forced into it, can't.

Like Trish.

Everyone's helping out now, doing their best, doing what they can. There's someone mysterious named Nat virtually coordinating almost all the rescue and repair efforts in New York from some hideout upstate, and Pepper freaking Potts who's working out how to keep the fucking lights on all over the world in what's left of the Stark Tower, and Captain Fucking America himself came by one day to help lift part of a giant fucking bridge that jammed and then partly collapsed when the city employee controlling it went all dust-in-the-wind. He was Technicolour handsome, even she had to admit it. He's all over the city mostly, helping to lift other really fucking heavy things, and what's left of the news follows him around like a puppy. They've even interviewed _her_ a couple of times (not for long, and after a while, the media went for stock stills, not candid shots, because she wouldn't put away her bottle). There's no hiding anymore, for good or bad. Mostly bad. The city still feels raw, ripped open, like a wound that can't heal. There's rumours of all kinds -- it was the Russians, it was a military experiment gone wrong, it was _aliens_ \-- but no real information. Everyone gave up asking for explanations, _reasons,_ after the first couple of days. Luke kept repeating his "Always forward" line and Danny quoted some more of the _Tao te Ching_ at her and Misty said "Shit happens," grimly, and that was about it.

Days were weeks and then were months and the scary thing is, Jessica can see how the days will become years: this is just the way they live now. The way they _will_ live. And that's if they're lucky, and work hard, and almost everyone's on their best goddamned behavior, forever. There's no Superman charging out of the phone booth on his way to save them all, no Vulcans making first contact (because of course Danny Rand, after being raised in Kathmandu, took about five minutes here to turn into a fucking _Trekkie)_, and no light at the end of the tunnel, unless someone brought a blowtorch. A flamethrower. Maybe at least some matches.

It's not safe to try to live off the grid at all, especially in the city, but they're all unconsciously conserving power now. Real iceboxes are back, like in Captain America's actual day, and even when the electricity's strong you can see the current doesn't light up the leftover light bulbs completely. Candles are more reliable than the power supply a lot of the time, and less punishing somehow. The soft shadows throw a flickering blanket over how grim and utilitarian most living spaces look now: whatever hasn't been looted or burned got used for fuel, or to make a barricade, or given away to someone else who had even less than you, less than nothing. What gets her nowadays is how freakily _nice_ too many people are -- apart from the rapists and murderers and muggers who're keeping the Defenders in business -- like they're all horribly aware, every single fucking second, that they're all poised on their toes on the very edge of a sheer cliff, like a fucking ballerina, and it takes absolutely everybody's effort and strength not to fall. The same fear in everyone's eyes: that the best of us are gone, _real gone,_ like the old song goes, and what's left is just the rest of us. So we have to try to be _good. _Even if we're really fucking bad at it.

The candles are like that, somehow, _nice;_ they look warm, friendly. Welcoming, even. And they hide that most of Matt's giant loft apartment is a total wreck, the windows all on one side broken out and boarded up, the walls bearing scorch marks and other scars of attempted assaults until the local hoods figured out real fast that whoever lived up here was Not To Be Fucked With. Everyone else is hanging out on the giant ratty leather couch, which has a big crazy candelabra in front of it, lighting up their faces. Danny and Luke are having some bullshit argument for fun about Romulans and what sounds to her like Kardashians. Misty is laughing at them, chiming in occasionally with some quiet point that makes them both shut up for a whole five minutes. Matt's draped over one arm so both Claire and Colleen can fuss over the really nasty gash on the back of his head he got when, as usual, he dived into the fight too fast and too soon, not waiting for the rest of them. His _fucking team._ She had made that point loudly, and continued to make it, even as Luke took care of what was left of the gang (real assholes, who had been targeting a little group of old Chinese people who had no one else left and clung together on the lower floors of a building because they couldn't live on the top ones like most other people did now), and Misty worked her contacts in what was left of the city police force. ("Liaised, Jones. I'm _liaising.")_ She'd finished up with, _"You_ said we had to _work together_ now!" and gotten a little smile in response -- not a mean smile, but a real one, on him she can tell the difference. Then she'd said something lame like, well at least he'd been hit on the _head_ so they knew he'd be okay, completely feeble. When they all got back to his place, she went to sulk in a trashed-looking but really comfortable leather armchair with some bourbon. (You fucking bet she has a stash. She doesn't trade with it, either, although if she did she could probably get whatever she wanted. Not that there's much left to want anymore.) She knocked back half of it right off the bat, but now she's not even sipping.

She tries to relax, but she's been feeling off all day -- this weird fucking feeling like she's almost been seeing ghosts, like people she can't see are walking up unheard behind her -- so she goes to the window, sitting on the sill so she can look out. She's _not_ looking for trouble, just enjoying the goddamn view: more candles in some windows, lamps and lanterns in others, even a few skyscrapers still half-lit up. But then of course there's a musical crash from the alley and a muffled shriek of pain, and a low threatening voice telling some poor jerk how much he's going to hurt in another second. She peers down into the gloom but it's hard to see without the streetlights, and all that ambient light from offices and corner stores and all-night signs she never thought about, til it was gone. She could go back to her bag and dig out her fancy Rand Enterprises infrared lens attachment but it's easier and faster to wrench open the window and drop down, so she does.

She hears them call after her -- "Jones, hey, JONES!" and "Jess-i-caaaaa....." and then Matt leaps down after her, the fool, with Danny and Luke pounding down the miraculously still-attached, now-reinforced fire escape after them, and Claire shouts out the window how she's going to literally wash her hands of Murdock and Misty calls, "Jones, I'm stealing your booze!"

Jessica stares at the two white guys still fighting in front of her, really thrown off for some reason -- only for a second, then Luke is supporting one gently and waving Danny over to use his Immortal Glowy Hand, and the other one -- no, that's not Matt. No, Matt is behind her, wearing loose sweatpants and a T-shirt. This guy is _dressed like_ Matt. Not even _like_ Matt, but in a weird cheap vinyl imitation suit. The guys are _both_ dressed like Matt, and this is starting to freak her out.

"Why are you wearing a Sexy Daredevil outfit?" she asks the kid.

"I'm _not_ DAREdevil," he says with plenty of attitude, like he didn't just see four powered people rolling out of Matt's loft in order to land on his ass. "I'm the other one, who -- " and whatever chance Jessica has of understanding what the fuck he's going on about leaves the building, as Matt suddenly steps forward and throws a textbook-perfect punch, putting all his weight behind it, pivoting from the hips. You could put it in a museum. Probably the first thing his old man taught him, right along with his A B C's. The guy goes down cold. Jessica pretends like she's counting down like a ref in the ring, and Matt shakes his head but smiles at her again, that same real and tiny smile.

"Something you'd like to share with the class?" she asks him, but then Luke says "What the _hell?"_ in a soft, wondering voice. When she turns around she sees two or three skinny young black kids in hoodies -- that's it, they're in hoodies with fake cut-in bullet holes, like the ones they sell in every bodega, still. Like Luke's. It's like she's seeing ghosts, or afterimages. She looks down the alley to the street and there's a few more people there -- a young woman in a clingy black catsuit, a couple of people with capes trailing behind them, everyone looking strange, somehow.

She says, "What the...." Matt asks, "Jess, what is it?" and she doesn't know how to describe it to him.

Luke's the one who gets it first: he says, "Hell, it's fucking _Halloween!"_ way too loud, and his relief at figuring out what's going on makes his voice boom out. That sound makes peoples' heads turn, and some of them wave, or start heading over to demand selfies on the new cheap little Starkphones every New Yorker gets for free, and he starts really laughing -- that warm, rich deep sound Jessica hasn't heard in so long. She starts laughing too because he is, at first, because it's been so long since she laughed. She's also laughing at herself, still jumping out the damn window, and all the people all around her, who are lighting candles and trying to scrounge up costumes and going out for parties or just for fun, here on the surface of the moon, all ash and no air. The laughter hurts her throat and threatens to turn into something else; Matt puts his hand on her arm and she almost shakes him off, then stands there, feeling the warmth of his hand through her shirt sleeve and even her leather jacket. Luke is posing for the world's dorkiest selfie with three or four mini-Lukes. It's so cute she can't even roll her eyes.

"It's costumes," she tells Matt, who nods, "people dressing up, for fucking _Halloween,"_ and then the memory hits her from so long ago of Trish and the ridiculous pink costume she came up with, for "Jewel," and Matt's hand tightens on her arm again. The kids are begging Luke to dab, just once, and he's standing there like a man carved from rock with his arms folded, immovable, but he's smiling and she bets he'll say yes after another minute or two of wheedling.

Then, Danny fucking Rand says, sounding fucking _delighted,_ "Hey, Jessica, there's _you!"_

Jessica whirls around and looks. Sure enough, there's a pencil-thin girl with a long black shiny super-synthetic wig and fake leather jacket, carefully ripped jeans, boots and even a camera -- no, it's fake too, a plastic prop, probably from a toy store. The girl smiles at her really cautiously and weakly, like Jessica's just figured out the lock is loose on her cage at the zoo.

"No," she says.

"Yeah," Luke agrees, the dabbing forgotten, "that _is_ you."

Jessica stares hard at the girl, who backs up a couple of steps.

"Nobody would dress up like me," she says.

"And yet, somebody _did,"_ Danny tells her, enjoying this way too fucking much. The girl, wisely, splits.

"That doesn't make any fucking sense. Why -- " Jessica stops herself right there. "Never mind. -- Shitty costume, anyway," she mutters after the girl, not loud enough for her voice to carry.

"I can think of why," Matt says, in his Totally Earnest Voice, the one that sometimes makes her want to punch him. She cuts him off by getting loudly on his case about why the hell did he _jump down_ from the window with a head wound Claire hadn't finished checking out yet, his fucking stupid luck doesn't make him _immortal,_ why hadn't he let her handle it? It was only a couple of kids -- and he says, "Well, you know, like you said. We have to stay together, now."

"Yeah, fuck you," she replies automatically, her eyes still on the spot where the girl in the black wig disappeared into the twilight gloom with the rest of them, the other ones dressed up and acting like heroes. For at least one night, maybe. Or, maybe, for as long as it takes, however long that's going to be. She feels Matt's hand on her arm again, feels his hand slide down her arm to her hand and he holds it for a moment, cupping her fingers loosely in his, until she squeezes back the slightest bit before she lets go.

**Author's Note:**

> The title is from [the David Bowie song.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tOyFkDKXbz4)
> 
> Jess's thoughts about rescues and a light at the end of the tunnel are paraphrased from [Sifu Hotman's "Matches,"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5goBGXUVKkk) which I played over and over while writing this.
> 
> I didn't quote it, but Rebecca Solnit's great book _A Paradise Built in Hell: The Extraordinary Communities That Arise in Disaster_ deeply influenced this story.


End file.
